FOOD AND THE ENVIRONMENT

One of the most positive effects you can have on the environment begins on your dinner plate.

In 1999, the Union of Concerned Scientists studied the personal effects of consumers on the environment to discover what daily activities were creating the most detrimental effects. They determined the Top Three Most Harmful Consumer Activities are:

• Driving cars
• Eating too much beef and poultry
• Eating non-organic fruits and vegetables

The Full Circle Food Cycle teaches us how to reduce our environmental impact through food choices by promoting:

1. sustainable agriculture and local family farming
2. eating more of a plant-based diet
3. reducing food waste through composting and food package reduction.

Did you know:

• There are over 2500 different fruits and vegetables currently on the planet and the average American eats less than 20 different types.
• It takes 12 pounds of grain and 2,500 gallons of water to make a pound of hamburger
• About 40 billion grocery bags are used each year in the U.S: 30 billion are plastic, 10 billion paper. More than 14 million trees were felled in 1999 to produce the 10 billion paper grocery bags used by Americans. About 1% of Americans bring their own bags to the grocery store.
• Conventional farming uses 33 times more pesticides than it did 50 years ago. But crop losses are 20 times higher. That's because close to 1,000 pests have developed resistance to these synthetic toxins.